Uprising Bakery @ArtsWestSide

Arts West Side, our satellite project on Old Market High Street is one year old! One of the key aims of the project was to create a sustainable café, supported by volunteer input, that could eventually offer paid work opportunities to volunteers as the project grows and develops. The ethos of the café is to provide healthy eating vegetarian/vegan options, which are in short supply in the local area, increase access to the Internet for the community by providing free wi-fi and computer terminals as well as offering an exhibition space for local artists and contributing to the ongoing regeneration of the Old Market area.

In order to help us better realise this vision, Trinity is now working in partnership with the Uprising Bakery, which provides vegetarian and vegan food and will start to work with local groups like the Trinity garden group to provide fresh seasonal veg locally sourced. Through this partnership, the Arts West Side project now has increased capacity to support and develop volunteer and participatory opportunities within the café space and is better placed to move towards creating real paid work for individuals as café footfall and catering enquiries increase.

In line with this, we are also developing a project and is seeking funding to provide a volunteer coordinator who is able to support other volunteers to develop and run regular activities, providing advice and support as well as access to small project budgets for volunteers to set up and deliver their own activities (for materials and flyers, for example). As part of the application, we will also seek some funding to cover workshops around the café led by the Uprising Bakery, as well as Food Hygiene certificates for core volunteers working in the café. Finally, the application will include a budget for a pair of laptops so that the café is better placed to offer free internet access to the local community.

The café will be open every day 11am-5pm and, if you are interested in volunteering, Ellie from the Uprising Bakery will be there to meet, greet and induct any new or existing volunteers. Jamell from Trinity is working to continue the coordination of a rotating Arts Exhibitions Programme, so please get in touch if you are a local artist interested in exhibiting work. Kate Marsden will be working to support any new or existing volunteers wishing to develop arts/community workshops (such as our 'stitch and b*tch' workshop, pictured right) and if you have any questions or for more information or to discuss how you want to be involved please contact westside@3ca.org.uk or join our Arts West Side Facebook group.